by C. G. Cooper
“So that’s it, then.”
Stone’s eyes brightened. “That’s it. Easy, wasn’t it?”
“When do I start?”
“You start right now. With a company perk.”
“Come again?”
“The car and its driver. They’re yours. You’ve been upgraded, Alex. We can’t have the head of a study as important as this driving a motorcycle. The car will take you to your offices when you’re ready. Maybe a shower first? A shave? Give me a call when you’ve settled into your new office. And let me know if there’s anything you need.”
Knight hauled himself out of the low, comfortable chair. He felt tired and grubby. He definitely needed a shower and a change of clothes.
“Oh, just one more thing,” Stone said as he shuffled files around on his desk. “I’ll take the data.”
“What data?”
“The data in your pocket, for heaven’s sake.” Stone continued to move papers around on his desk, not once looking up.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Stone looked up, stopped shuffling, and reached under his desk. He’d evidently tapped a button, because, at that moment, the office doors opened and in walked two security guards. Not the fleshy unfit type who stomped around on the ground floor; no, these were burly, hard men who filled their uniforms with muscle.
Reluctantly, Knight removed the memory stick from his pocket and handed it over the desk.
“Thank you,” said Stone, placing the stick in his open suitcase and then slamming it shut with a locking snap. “Turn your attention to the job at hand, Alex.” Stone’s voice hardened momentarily, and Knight detected it clearly. “You’ll hear from me soon.”
9
Knight disliked the new job. He disliked the new office. He disliked the location of the new office, and he disliked being chained to a desk. He missed his old lab. Missed laboratories in general. He had spent most of his working and student life in labs. Even his motorcycle workshop had been more like a laboratory than this new office.
He slumped back in his executive chair and rotated gently. He looked across his desk and out through the interior window to the wider office. It was drab and soulless, an off-the-peg office. Ugly lighting dribbling out from wide translucent panels set in the low suspension ceilings filled the space with gloom. The light brown low partition panels cut the space into small, dreary enclaves. Large potted plants that were strategically dotted about the office did little to bring any cheer, the drooping green leaves seeming to suffer from the same miserable cloud that hung permanently across the space.
He rested a heel on a partially-opened desk drawer, folding his hands behind his head, and stared at the miserable workplace. His small team seemed to have plenty to do. He had not given any instructions, but the three kept themselves busy. The office manager, Mrs. Blunt, was a librarian type nearing retirement age. She had worked for the National Institutes of Health her entire adult life, starting as a mailroom clerk, and had risen to the position of office manager. Knight noticed that she had the uncanny ability to spend an entire day giving the distinct impression that she was busy.
The youngest member of Knight’s small team, Simon Jeffries, was also the least busy, apart from Knight himself. Jeffries, the nephew of some senior government official, seemed to be mostly occupied with social media; he sat at a desk giggling most of the day, apart from the rare occasions when Mrs. Blunt gave him something useful to do.
Having spent the best part of a week spinning in his chair and staring out across the small office, Knight could see without a doubt that the only member of his team who actually did any useful work was the administrative assistant, Sarah Hansen. She spent extended periods at her desk typing on her keyboard and either reading from or writing in the large diary she kept open on her desk. She was the only person who seemed to use the photocopier, apart from the day when Jeffries spent hours photocopying a series of graphic novels that he openly boasted about returning to Barnes and Noble for a full refund. Sarah was also the only person in the office who had ever used the bank of filing cabinets.
He’d watched her closely. What she was typing, writing, and filing was anyone’s guess, but he had no reason to think it was anything other than work-related. She rarely spoke on the phone. She rarely talked to her colleagues, other than her regular offer to bring coffee from the cafe across the street. She would also knock on Knight’s door periodically, popping her head in to ask if he wanted something of whatever it was she was running out for. She always leaned in, her loose blouse falling forward to reveal the pretty white bra she wore, along with a tasteful yet arousing amount of cleavage.
He had spent much of the last week watching Sarah Hansen. He became familiar with the way that one long curl of hair fell at the side of her face when she typed at her desk, and how she stopped to tuck it away, her chest bursting forward as she sent her hands behind her head. He noticed the way her skirt rode up and her calves tightened when she went up onto the tips of her toes, reaching up to place files in the top drawer. He noticed the dark line that marked the top of her stockings as the skirt climbed. He noticed the way she leaned on the photocopier, her bottom straining at the tight gray skirt.
He noticed he was staring at her after a few days when she looked up from her desk and straight at him. She smiled in a friendly way, swept the long, dark curl away from her face, and returned to her work, leaving Knight to watch as that curl came loose again and tumbled down the side of her smooth cheek.
A week on the job, he thought, and I’ve been reduced to a leering creep.
But it was more than that. There was a longing deep within him. If he’d taken a moment to honestly reflect on the situation, he might have seen how his loneliness left him vulnerable.
With his first week drawing to a close, and with little to show for his time, Knight started to plan his weekend. Maybe he could rent some lab space and work on his research. Or rent some equipment and convert his apartment into a bio-med lab and complete the work from home. Perhaps he should take some time away and clear his head. The last week had been a roller coaster. He’d been raided, arrested, released, and set up in this nonsense job. He owed it to himself to take a little time off.
He’d take his bike along the coast for a few hours, pull into a small hotel and catch up on some reading. Hang out in the city, go to the movies, or try that new Moroccan restaurant.
Maybe, he thought grimly, he ought to do some work.
He had spent the entire week growing increasingly impatient at being locked out of his lab, prohibited from doing the work he was meant to be doing. The job he had now was little more than a glorified book review. All he had to do was trawl through hundreds, if not thousands, of pages of reports and testimonies on vaccinations, and then compile a report refuting any claims that they were a health hazard. Even that lazy boy Jeffries could do it, if Mrs. Blunt were to crack the whip on him every few minutes.
Knight took his feet down from the desk drawer where they’d been resting and stood up from his chair. As he walked toward the office door, he noticed how Mrs. Blunt seemed to become a little busier, and how Jeffries sat up and stopped giggling. Only Sarah, currently at her desk, curl hanging, seemed not to notice that he was walking toward the office door.
Knight opened the door, the blinds clattering against the thin glass. Jeffries shifted uncomfortably. Blunt punched her keypad a little more quickly. Sarah stopped what she was doing and stood up, a notepad and pen in her hand as if drawn from a holster.
“Is there anything I can do for you, Doctor?”
“What time do you usually finish work on a Friday?”
Knight noticed Jeffries suddenly become attentive.
“Office hours are until five thirty, Monday to Friday,” said Mrs. Blunt.
Knight nodded and made a show of considering this information. “I see. I might want to make a few changes as we go along. And perhaps we could have an early finish on a Friday, say four o’clock?”
&n
bsp; Alex Knight hadn’t become such a good scientist without strong observational skills. He could see now how all three of his staff members were excited by the suggestion, even as they all tried to hide their enthusiasm.
“Unless anyone has anything on their desk that can’t wait until Monday,” he glanced up at the large office clock that was showing a few minutes to four, “I think we can shut everything down and head off for the weekend.”
The office emptied in moments. Jeffries was the first out, closely followed by Blunt. As Knight came back out of his office, swinging his jacket over his shoulder, he saw only Sarah was left. She was sitting against her desk and had kicked off her heels. They lay on the floor next to a pair of turquoise Nike sneakers with red laces. She had one foot in her hand, and she rubbed her arches and calf muscles, her hand sliding over the light nylon stockings. She glanced up as Knight pulled his door shut.
“Any plans for the weekend, Doctor?” she said, sliding a foot into one of the sneakers.
The office lights had been switched off; only the daylight coming through the window was lighting the drab, gray interior.
“Work,” Knight lied. “You?”
Sarah swept the hanging curl back over her ear and began readjusting her hair, tying back the simple ponytail together with the errant curl. With her hands behind her head adjusting her hair, her chest strained at her blouse. “A few hours in the gym, and then meeting my mother. Maybe a show.”
“That’s nice.”
“You?”
“Oh,” he said, flustering, “I have stuff I need to take care of.”
“Huh,” she said, slipping her feet back into the heels. “To be honest, I’m not all that into working out tonight.”
“No?”
“Nope. As a matter of fact,” she said, putting a finger to her lip, “I’m more into a cheeseburger and a good IPA.”
“Are you now?”
“I mean, if you’re buying.”
He laughed. “Okay then, I guess I’m buying.”
She turned and bent over her desk to grab her handbag that was sitting on her chair.
He felt his enthusiasm for the secretary grow.
“How long have you been with the department?”
“You mean Tumbleweed Hall? About eight years. I took a job straight out of school in a small office near where I grew up.” She ran a spoon around the inside of her mug and scooped up the creamy froth that had clung there. “And I found I was really good at admin. It’s not difficult, but I enjoy it. I saw an advertisement for a junior office administrator in the department. The money was decent, so I went for it. My old boss said only connected people get those kinds of jobs and that I shouldn’t bother. I’m sure he didn’t want to lose me. He liked me, you see.” She looked at Knight and put the spoon in her mouth before sliding it slowly out, taking all the milky, coffee foam off it.
“Well,” he said, pretending not to notice, “you seem wonderf-, you know, you seem to have everything under control.”
Once again, she slowly ran the spoon around the inside of the cup. “I like to stay on top of things,” she said coyly, looking at him through the tops of her eyes.
Her body suddenly convulsed in a sneeze. “Eek-chew!”
He laughed. “Now that was just adorable.”
She chuckled. “Stop.”
“Stop what?”
“Don’t make fun of my sneeze!”
“I can’t help it. Eek-CHEW!”
She reached over and hit him on the arm.
“All right, all right, I’m sorry!”
Knight happened to notice his reflection in the coffee shop window. It was after eight, and the windows of the coffee shop were reflecting the bright interior. “It’s getting late,” he said. “I know a bar nearby that makes an excellent Long Island Iced Tea.”
“Have you ever been there?”
“The bar?”
“Long Island.”
“No, I haven’t.”
She bit her bottom lip. “Pity. I always wanted to visit the birthplace of that exquisite iced tea.”
She winked at him, and then her cell rang. She dug her phone out of her purse, took a quick look at the screen, and then looked up at Knight with a flat, apologetic smile. “It’s my mother.” She answered the call. “Hello, Mother, I’ll call you right back... What? Oh... all righty.” And then she ended the call. “Sorry, Doctor.”
“Alex,” Knight said. “Please call me Alex.”
“I’ll have to take a rain check on that cocktail,” she said, gathering her things.
After walking her to a taxi, with a promise that they’d continue their scintillating conversation (he loved her sense of irony) over as many Long Island Iced Teas as her tight little vessel could hold, he stood there in the dark city, pumped on caffeine and not feeling one damn bit of good about it. A hot woman had just run out on him, leaving him a little confused. Women had never left him confused. He could score a date for tonight if he wanted, some girl who would drink that cocktail or two and not run out on him for her mother. He could call up any number of girls for a date. So why didn’t he feel like it? Why instead did he opt for watching the taxi carrying Sarah disappear into the night, feeling sorry for himself?
He looked across the street to the office, the low building that looked more like a used car shop than a government health department. The nearest high-rise buildings were a few miles away with a mix of low-rise, low-rent businesses and residences between this area and the desirable part of the city. The pretty Ms. Hansen had been a diversion, but this was the reality: a crappy office in a crappy part of town with a crappy job to do until that bastard Stone let him back into a lab. Who knew how much of his chops would be rusted and creaky by then. Added to that, being held over a barrel was every bit as crappy as he ever thought it could be.
If he was going to endure this situation, he would at least make the most of the one perk. He would get that staff car to take him uptown where he would get that Long Island Iced Tea. It was Friday, goddammit.
He pulled out his cell to call for a staff car from the department. A terse operator told him the nearest car would be with him in thirty minutes. The moment Knight questioned this, the operator shot back that it was Friday after all and that it might even take forty minutes. Fearing another complaint would add another swatch of time to his wait, he decided to thank the operator and wait it out.
The night air had taken on a chill. He turned back to the coffee shop. A young waitress was turning the sign to ‘Sorry, we’re closed’ just as Knight stepped up to the door. The server offered a shrug and a smile. The door stayed shut.
Knight stood on the sidewalk and looked left and right for another place to wait. He didn’t know this part of town at all and couldn’t be sure where the nearest hot or alcoholic drink could be found. But there across the street, silhouetted in the darkening evening. lay the dreary little office.
I either stand out here with my nose to the windows of closed-up shops like Charlie Chaplin, or I do something useful with my life.
As a chill breeze ruffled his shirt, he strode across the street, hands digging out the small bunch of office keys from his pocket. At least he’d be able to sit down and wait for the car, even if it was at his desk.
At this time of night, with the harsh lights blinking on and the cold glow from the computer monitors absent, the office was at the peak of dullness. Even the whir and hum of the office equipment was missing. The place was as dead as Gandhi.
He went into his office and slumped into his chair. He checked the time on his cell. Still twenty-five minutes to wait. He switched on the computer and sat back in the chair as the monitor blinked to life. The computer desktop was neat and ordered. The project brief from Professor Stone sitting in a folder on his desktop was the only thing on the computer of any significance. It was all a sure sign, Knight thought, that he hadn’t been doing any work. All week spent at his desk in this job that any halfwit could do. All week spent staring out at t
he office floor watching his little team.
The simple fact was that he missed his lab. He could work there, he could do things there, and he could change the world there. He could save lives there. Here, stuck behind this second-rate office desk, all he was doing was feeling his life—and the lives of countless others—slipping away. It was a moral equivalence, to be sure. Alex Knight had no dog in the fight against human misery as it stood in the world. But he liked to think that in some small way he was pulling the ropes, grinding out bolts and bullets for those who would be doing the fighting.
Stone would be in touch early next week. Monday, no doubt. The fastidious dandy would want a report. What was there to say? Knight could frankly admit he had done nothing, that the work was pointless and a waste of his talent. He could tell Stone that the office sucked. The location sucked. He could tell him that Mrs. Blunt was a lazy old prune, that Jeffries was a lazy young idiot, and that Sarah was the only one who actually did any work, and thank you for hiring her, by the way, for she happens to be a rare and radiant jewel in this petrified turd factory...
10
It began with a combination of search terms, and the door opened for Alex Knight.
He found himself transfixed by the articles that came up. The supposed link between vaccines and autism was a rich vein. Parents across the nation were convinced that their children had developed autism following vaccination. It was no small corner of the population, or some niche group making complaints. These reports were coming from all walks of life, from all socio-economic, racial, and cultural groups. No group, it seemed, was unaffected.
Knight clicked from one article to another, skimming in moments that which some people might struggle to absorb and comprehend in hours. He read account after account of distressed parents. He read counter claims from medical professionals that there was no link, that this was a coincidence, an unconnected occurrence, or just bad luck.
His work demanded skepticism, and so he formed his own pet theory. It was a matter of the cluster effect. No broken glass will scatter its shards in an even distribution across the floor, and no disease or neurodevelopmental disorder will behave the same way. There are bound to be clusters of people affected. And humans, being pattern-seeking animals, needed to find connections. Add to that a distraught parent desperate for answers that science is not yet ready to provide, and you have something akin to a simmering mob, one waiting to be fed the right amount of heat to be pushed to boil.